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Introduction -- Honored in the breach. The edicts of Louis XIV; "A barbarous custom"; Abbé de Saint-Pierre; Corneille, Le Cid (1637)-- The comical duel. Deterring the duellist; Duel and ridicule; Molière, Le bourgeois gentilhomme (1670); More wretches and cowards; Sedaine, Le philosophe sans le savoir (1765); Sheridan, The rivals (1775); Dickens, The Pickwick papers (1836) -- The poignant duel. Richardson, Clarissa; or, the history of a young lady (1747/48); Rousseau, Julie; ou, la nouvelle Héloïse (1761); Laclos, Les liaisons dangereuses (1782) -- The judicial duel. Kleist, Der Zweikampf (1811) -- The "romantic" duel. Nature's aristocrats vs. Darwinian imperatives; Pushkin, Eugene Onegin (1823/31); Mérimée, Le vase Étrusque (1830) -- The duel and self-realization. Smollett, The adventures of Roderick Random (1748); Casanova, Il duello, ovvero saggio della vita di G. C. Veneziano (1780); Hugo, Marion de Lorme (1829); Thackeray, The memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. (1844); Dumas pére, Les trois mousquetaires (1844) -- A grotesque comedy. Twain, A tramp abroad (1878) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894); Maupassant, Un duel (1883) and Un lâche (1884); Conrad, A duel (1908); Schnitzler, Casanovas Heimfahrt (1918); Pirandello, Il giuoco delle parti (1918) -- Conclusion: paradoxes of the duel. A tragi-comedy; The savage noble; The cult of style; Laws and rules; The duel over women -- 1918: An epilogue
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